One for All trait activated!

You have gained the Earth Element trait! You have learned the Shatter skill! You can make rocks explode by infusing them with magic!

Smartroot has prevented impregnation!

 

What? I thought. My head was pounding but the notifications didn’t stop.

 

One For All trait activated! 

You have gained the Darksight trait! You can see better in the darkness!  

Smartroot has prevented impregnation!

Smartroot has prevented impregnation!

Smartroot has prevented impregnation!

Smartroot has worn off…

Sleep Tonic has worn off…

 

What the…? My head was pounding, my body was buzzing, and I felt like I was going to vomit. I was no longer seated at the table but rather laying down. There was an odd taste in my mouth and something was pushing on my thigh. I was having trouble moving my limbs, they felt so heavy.

Schluck! Schluck! Schluck!

My ears stopped pounding and I could hear a little better. The feeling was returning to my body. A small green silhouetted figure was pushing on me with both hands on my right thigh, and I quickly realized he wasn’t just pushing on me. He was naked. I was naked. Suddenly the feeling of heaviness and lack of awareness subsided and I realized what was happening. 

I grabbed him by the throat and stood, lifting him high into the air. The naked little green man struggled and I heard a squeal from behind me. There was a second and third Goblin, too, now that I could focus. 

I was madder than I’d ever been since leaving Draconis. I felt violated. Humiliated. Again. This part is supposed to be over, I thought, squeezing with all my might. 

“W-Wait!” The Goblin wheezed out.

 

Physical Attack deals 1,928 damage to Goblin!

You have killed Goblin!

 

I dropped the lifeless Goblin to the floor and the second one made a run for it. I grabbed him with Shadow Limb and swung him head-first into the table with enough force that he crumpled like a tin can. The third and final Goblin was whimpering on the edge of the bed, just above where I’d been laid out on the floor.

“Who did this?” I pointed my finger right in the Goblin’s face, but I smelled a familiar smell. The nasty drunk smell from the night before, when I’d first met that creepy guy. “What was his name? Eddy? Edward?”

“E-Edge!” The Goblin stammered “H-he must have charmed us!”

I flare my halo. “You aren’t lying to me, are you?” The light lit up the entire room like the morning sun. The Goblin scurried to the headboard to put more distance between us. He was only level 11, I was confident my halo would force him to tell me the truth. That sleazy drunk from the bar? Seriously?

“N-No! Edge swore he wouldn’t Charm us again after the last time!” The Gobin was on his knees now, hands clasped in a bow, “Don’t kill me!”

My eye twitched, “and by Charm, you mean that he forced you to do this against your will?” 

The Goblin nodded profusely, “Yes! I swear! Not that you aren’t pretty or-”

“Enough,” I grumbled and turned to look at the other two Goblins. Innocent. Technically. I was still mad, but if what I knew of charms was correct, then it really wasn’t their fault. I had a general idea of what charms were, I used to play a lot of games after all. Charms could force people to do things against their will unless they had a strong mind. “Did he make you do anything else?”

“Swap the drink,” the Goblin pointed at the decanter of sweet milk that had put me to sleep the previous night.

“And where is Edge now?” I tried to keep my voice even, but I was mad about the thought of being charmed. Did he try to charm me, too? Probably. Almost guaranteed. It didn’t help when the Goblin shrugged. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Where does he normally stay?”

“Outside! He stays outside the city!”

“Where outside?”

The Goblin pressed against the headboard like a cornered animal. I lowered the brightness of my Halo from blazing sun to standard lightbulb. The intimidation phase was over. “Do they know anything?” I motioned to the two dead Goblins. Another shrug.

I took a deep breath and tried another approach, “How about this. I revive your two friends here and you go and find him and tell me where he is. He dies, you live.”

The Goblin slowly blinked for a moment, looking between the two corpses. “You can… revive people?” 

I nodded, pulling the vial of revival fluid from my inventory. Pulling things out of thin air was such an odd sensation to get used to. I shook the glass for effect. “Well? It’s either this or I turn you over to Sir Orrick and he can help me find Edge.”

“I’ll do it! No need for the guards!” 

One drop was all that was needed, reviving the Goblin with the broken neck first. It snapped and crackled back into place and he gasped for breath. The first Goblin, whose name was Rock, explained the deal to the newly revived Goblin, Speartip, while I revived the other.

Cash, the Goblin crumpled on the floor, began to uncrumpled and stood up. He patted himself down with a horrified look on his face. They all three looked at each other, then to me.

“Put some clothes on and sit down.”

The three of them scurried to put on their meager clothing, which consisted of oversized torn shirts and dirty pants many times too big held with twine belts. I was already dressed, they’d just hiked up my dress for their excursion. 

The other two Goblins agreed to the deal, preferring not to be turned over to the guards and happy to be alive. I got the feeling they weren’t on good terms with the guards already. I would meet them behind the tavern at the end of the day to see if they found anything.

There was no way I thought I could get back to sleep, but after stewing about all the ways I wanted to dismember that stupid drunk, I fell asleep. The couch was too soft, and my eyes too heavy.

 

. . .

 

Knock! Knock! Knock!

 

I jolted awake in surprise at the knock on the door. I sat for a few seconds to gather myself before peeking through the circular hole in the door to see who was there. Griff. The Tiorge from last night, holding a large bag of something. He was looking around impatiently, then knocked again.

I opened the door.

“Hey,” he did a slight wave with his right hand, extending the bag out to me with his other, “your winnings.”

“Winnings? I thought you said I cheated,” I replied.

“Orianna has vouched for you,” he said.

There was a moment of silence and I accepted the bag. “Well, thanks I guess.”

Another moment of silence and I set the bag on a table just inside the door. No use in counting it, I had no idea how much it was worth yet. The air was awkward and I felt like there was more. Something he wanted to say, but couldn’t quite get the words out.

“Anything else?” I prompted.

“One thing,” he stroked the fur on his chin. A thinking face didn’t fit the muscular bipedal cat monster, but it was cute. “How did you get so strong? You’re so… uh…”

“Small?” I asked. He was not-so-subtly sizing me up.

“Yeah, that. You’re teeny tiny and yet,” he had a far-off look in his eye, imagining the scene from the previous night, “that was something else.”

“Thanks, I guess. What does my size have to do with my abilities? You think I’m weak because of the way I look?”

“At first, yeah, I did,” he shrugged. “This is weird, but can I use a skill on you?”

“What skill?” I asked, a little defensively. My thoughts immediately turned to think of charms.

“It’s a type of scan skill that compares my abilities to yours,” he said.

“Does it require something weird? You haven’t just scanned me already?”

“I didn’t think to bother last night, admittedly,” he said, “but I do kind of need to stare at you for a minute or two to use it.”

“Do what you want,” I turned to the bag and took it to the large table. I turned it upside-down and let the contents spill out.

The polyhedrals rolled out onto the table and I stared at them, knowing nothing about what any of it meant. Do you know anything about these? I asked the voice in my head. Each of them had strange markings on each side that I didn’t recognize that flickered to life in vibrant reds, blues, and yellows.

“Raw Mana Crystals,” the voice answered, “used as currency and come in all elemental varieties. They can be infused into items to increase their attributes or consumed raw to temporarily increase abilities associated with the stone’s magic attribute.”

“What are these worth?” I turned to face Griff. He blushed a little, and I think he didn’t know where to look now that I was facing him. I picked up one of them and looked at it more carefully. It had 8-sides and was shaped like two pyramids stacked base to base. 

 

Mana Crystal (s), Lightning       A small crystal containing a small amount of raw elemental power of Lightning!

 

“Well, the small ones are like copper or iron coins where I come from,” he was staring at my hand and the small gem I was holding, “like that one, yeah. And the medium ones are more like silver and the size of a Bling-blong Ball. He made a gesture with his hand that was about the same size as a golf ball to me. I had a number of those scattered in the mess. 

“And these?” I held up one of the bigger ones, the size of a baseball in my world, “Like gold, right?” 

“Or more, depending on the rarity of the element. Fire and Water yes, but Metal and Ice would be better, and even more than that would be Holy or Dark.”

“Makes sense,” I nodded, turning back towards the table. I could almost feel his relief without the intensity of my constant eye contact.

I sat down and began to group the small stones by size and elemental color. The only rare ones were in the smalls, a few lightning and ice in with majority fire, water, and earth. Earth was definitely the most common. I had a small pile of mediums, all fire and earth. 3 large ones, all fire. 

Triple or nothing, I thought back to the bet I’d made the previous night. I counted 3 Large, 27 medium, and 90 small polyhedrals. It was all divisible by three, so I reckoned he must have been telling the truth. That and my Halo was still on lightbulb mode. He literally couldn’t lie to me, yet I hadn’t detected any missteps or backtracking in his speech, so he was honest at the least.

“Why did you bring this to me?” I gestured to the piles of polyhedrals.

“You earned it,” he said. “Fair and square, no matter what that old codger thinks.”

“Honorable of you,” I said. “Have you finished scanning me yet?” 

His voice came out as a surprised “uh” like he forgot what he was doing for a moment. He cleared his throat before speaking. “It’s odd,” he said. “I’ve never seen a scan like this before, everything is in red accompanied by skulls. On all your stats.”

“Usually it means danger, my guy,” I said. “In my world, if an enemy you scanned had skulls they were usually too high of a challenge for you, and you’d come back later when you were stronger or had better gear.”

“Your world was like this world?”

“Kind of, my world had a lot of worlds in it. We invented our own worlds and our own realities. I’ve played in virtual reality worlds with similar mechanics to this one, and also just regular game worlds with these fantasy elements.”

“It’s like you’re speaking a different language,” he said, blinking. “You travel to other worlds as a game? Is this one of your games?”

“No, I died and was resurrected here. Clearly, they thought it would be funny to trap me inside of an unfair game world,” I said with disdain. I had in fact been tricked into thinking this would be a game where I was a protagonist, not some tameable monster girl. “Maybe this is my hell.”

He nodded like he understood, but I didn't think he quite understood it all. He was nice and straightforward, but games to me weren’t the same thing to him. “So how do you win this game?” He asked.

“I defeat the Dragons and find a way back to my world, I guess. But I was dead, so I don’t know how that works. I’ll figure that out once I get past the whole Dragon-fighting part.”

“My Dragon was a trainer,” Griff said. “He came to the woods, confident I could defeat anything here. He got mauled by Silverfangs. I was found by an Orc patrol and Orianna fixed my curse mark for me. Been here ever since. What happened to your Dragon?”

“I killed him,” I said flatly, staring eye-to-eye with Griff. 

“Oh,” he paused for a minute. “I never thought I could do that.”

“Then, I followed a group of Dragons to this forest and was discovered by an Orc patrol. Orianna led me here.”

“What about before that? Your world?” I asked, curious.

“Clan wars,” he said. “I too died and was brought here. However, I thought this is just what happens when one dies. A reincarnation, as told by the ancient Turtlefolk of my world.”

I nodded and we sat in silence for a minute. “Well, either way, we’re all stuck here under the thumb of the Dragons, and I don’t plan on being captured again. I’ll do whatever it takes to live in peace.”

Now I was the one sizing up the Tiogre, thinking about the abilities I could get from him. I was truly desensitized to intimacy. I was thinking in terms of abilities and eggs, rather than love and relationships. My body was a resource that everyone around me would exploit in a heartbeat, so why shouldn’t I use it for myself instead? It’s all about consent and control, I thought. I’d kill anyone who broke that relationship.

We stood in silence for a moment, before Griff spoke again. “Would you be down for some, uh, training?” 

“Like going to the gym?” If I were to see him again, I wouldn’t have to worry about rushing to get a trait from him now. What if he isn’t even interested in that? 

“I don’t know what a gym is,” he admitted, “I meant combat training, hand-to-hand, weapons, stuff like that.”

“Oh, right, yeah, totally! I’ll be honest, with this strength, I haven’t thought much about technique. If I hit it hard enough, or throw something hard enough, it’ll usually do the trick. I took a boxing class once upon a time.” I did a shadow-boxing gesture to push the concept home. 

“Like fist-fighting?” He asked.

“Yeah, it has like eight different punches and the rest is footwork and balance,” I explained, moving into a classic boxing stance. I straightened with both feet shoulder-width apart. Left foot forward, with both hands at chin level, elbows tucked. I bent my knees and threw a few more punches into thin air, demonstrating a jab and a follow-up, pivoting to increase the potential force of the air punch.

Thwack!

I threw a punch into the air with all my force, stopping abruptly without striking a surface. A portrait on the wall exploded ten feet away and fell from its hanging to the floor in pieces. A fist-sized imprint was all that was left in the stone wall. Damnit, I thought, thinking of Mallie. She’s going to kill me.

“Is that a skill?” Griff asked.

“No, I think I just have enough strength to send shockwaves if I punch hard enough. I’ve seen it in other worlds,” I said.

“To me, it seems you don’t have full control,” Griff pointed out the obvious.

“I don’t know my limits, yet,” I said, looking down at my fists.

“Well you put me out of a job, so if you get the inkling, come down to the training yard. I have a gig sparring with the new guard recruits.”

“If I get the chance, sure,” I shrugged. “I don’t know where anything is in the city and I have to find that Dwarf, too.”

“It’s close to the center. You’ll know. Huge open area, with lots of tents and Orcs. I don’t know anything about the Dwarf.”

And with that, he took his leave. 

I pondered Griff the Tiogre for a short time, while I took another bath, and then readied for an excursion into the city. The money in my inventory was separate from the rest, appearing in its own tab and not counting against my magic inventory list. The voice said it was because they added as much magic to the space as they took up. I didn’t think about it too much. It was a heck of a lot better than risking it being stolen or losing it.

I was ready to go pick out some new clothing and accessories, and maybe locate a lost Dwarf, before meeting Angeknight tonight to watch the rest of my memories.